NOtorious RBG nails it

Everyone's favorite SUpreme COurt justice makes the point:

[Same-sex couples] wouldn’t be asking for this relief if the law of marriage was what it was a millennium ago. I mean, it wasn’t possible. Same-sex unions would not have opted into the pattern of marriage, which was a relationship, a dominant and a subordinate relationship. Yes, it was marriage between a man and a woman, but the man decided where the couple would be domiciled; it was her obligation to follow him.

There was a change in the institution of marriage to make it egalitarian when it wasn’t egalitarian. And same-sex unions wouldn’t — wouldn’t fit into what marriage was once.

Justice Ginsburg’s point was that, until surprisingly recently, the legal institution of marriage was defined in terms of gender roles.....So American marriage law, and the English law that it was derived from, presumed that the wife was both financially and sexual subservient to the husband. In a world where marriage is defined as a union between a dominant man and a submissive woman, each fulfilling unique gender roles, the case for marriage discrimination is clear. How can both the dominant male role and the submissive female role be carried out in a marital union if the union does not include one man and one woman? This, according to Justice Ginsburg, is why marriage was understood to exclude same-sex couples for so many centuries.

But marriage is no longer bound to antiquated gender roles. And when those gender roles are removed, the case for marriage discrimination breaks down.

Now, we wait.

It's not Gay Marriage vs Church any more (voices of faith)

Click image for more
Voices of Faith

I guess the media is finally coming around to understand that "Christian" is not a synonym for "anti-marriage equality".

Not when clear majorities of Americans generally, and of most Christian faith groups, support marriage equality.

William Eskridge writes in the NY Times:

My point is not that the Bible must be read in a gay-friendly way; it is simply that the Bible is open to honest interpretations that refuse to condemn or that even embrace such families. I am doubtful that Scripture speaks with one voice about how to define civil marriage.

....Assume that the Supreme Court interprets the 14th Amendment to mean that states can’t exclude gay couples from civil marriage. What will the faith traditions, which are adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage, do? The tolerant path I’ve suggested won’t unfold immediately, and different denominations will respond in different ways.

Some congregations will double down, not only reaffirming their understanding of traditional marriage but denouncing gay people even more fervently. The First Amendment gives them the right to react this way.

But if all 50 states issue marriage licenses on an equal basis, more same-sex couples will choose to wed. Some religious communities will take this as an opportunity to reconsider their views of those committed unions, and quietly welcome these families into their houses of worship.

With greater tolerance and acceptance of gay married couples, more religions will, slowly, modify doctrinal discourse to match social discourse — exactly the way they did for their previous disapproval of marriages between two people of different races. ...

And most importantly,

Today, some progressives harbor inaccurate stereotypes about religious people as anti-gay and intolerant. The Episcopalians, Unitarians, Presbyterians and many other faiths are falsifying those stereotypes. Just as American religion is changing, so, too, are the ranks of those who are pushing for equality.

As one Prop8 proponent conceded, we will be more American on the day all of us can marry equally. 

It's Time (video Sunday)

Nuns walk out

In Marin County CA, nuns who teach in a Catholic high school walked out, because they were offended that students were handing out flyers about GLSEN's Day of Silence. For those who don't know, this is a nationwide day of protest against bullying, where students who support LGBT rights simply say.... nothing. The nuns, however, feel that it is offensive and anti-Catholic. That is, that standing up in silence somehow is offensive to the nuns.

When some Marin Catholic High students began handing out Day of Silence-related stickers and flyers on campus Friday morning, the five nuns felt “felt compromised, offended and uncomfortable,” Sister Clare Marie, one of the teachers, later wrote in a lengthy e-mail to her students.

She said the sisters “do not support bigotry or any kind of prejudice,” but that they were compelled to act out against an event promoted by a group that “believes actively in promoting homosexuality in all classrooms, K-12.”

Her e-mail also accused the group’s members of speaking out “against Christians who do not share their views” and handing out materials that “say that any church which teaches homosexuality is sinful is an 'oppressor’ and should be opposed.”
....

 Okay, first of all, this is not about recruiting kids to be gay.  They are, or they aren't.  It's standing up to bullying, like the anti-gay flannel shirt bullies in the school in Pennsylvania.

The next day, a group of students walked the halls at McGuffey High raising awareness of what they unimaginatively dubbed “Anti Gay Day.” Some had “anti-gay” scrawled on their hands and a Christian cross etched on their flesh with a black marker to show how committed they were to being Jesus’ truest disciples.

Others let their freaky flannel fly on social media, where they “tagged” known and suspected LGBT students at their school with homophobic insults and Bible verses. A few GSA-affiliated students found pithy, but hateful, flyers saying “ANTI-GAY” stuck to their lockers....

.... What had a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person ever done to them except get out of the way whenever these boys strutted en masse down the hall?

 But more than that, the sisters personify something identified by Irish equality campaigner and drag queen, Panti Bliss:

So now ... gay people find ourselves in a ludicrous situation where not only are we not allowed to say publicly what we feel oppressed by, we are not even allowed to think it because our definition has been disallowed by our betters.

.... And a jumped-up queer like me should know that the word “homophobia” is no longer available to gay people. Which is a spectacular and neat Orwellian trick because now it turns out that gay people are not the victims of homophobia – homophobes are.

Same sex marriage actually a win for traditionalists

Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic:

Gay marriage has been successful in the courts precisely because, given both the actual behavior of married Americans and the prevailing legal logic of many decades, it was impossible to maintain the fiction that civil marriage remained an inherently procreative institution, even if sacramental marriage in some faiths remains so. It took the arrival of gay marriage to wake some traditionalists up to the fact that that religious and secular notions of what marriage is had long since parted ways. But the logic of same-sex marriage requires no leaps beyond what heterosexuals had already made. It fits within the Enlightenment model of civil marriage as a contract. For traditionalists, its logic is such that nothing new is lost....

Why? Because if civil unions/domestic partnerships had been the norm, straights would have wanted access to them too, precisely because they weren't marriage. That's what happened in France, for example.

Instead, a culturally influential minority is now included in marriage, so it remains the default way that couples join; religious people are as free as ever to marry in a fully traditional sense; and secular straights retain more traditional aspects and attitudes than they would if they'd switched over to a new paradigm of coupledom.

RBG on equality (video Sunday)

The upcoming SCOTUS decision

From Scotusblog:

Three lessons emerge from this brief history of same-sex marriage litigation in the United States. First, the evolution of constitutional law has more to do with changing social and political mores than with traditional sources of constitutional law such as text, original understanding, and precedent. Same-sex marriage has advanced from an absurd constitutional argument to a compelling one – at least in the mind of five Justices – because public attitudes regarding sexual orientation have been transformed over the last half-century.

To a greater extent than most people probably are aware, other landmark Court rulings on issues of social reform were similarly inconceivable only a decade or two before they happened. ... 

Second, Court decisions on issues of social reform that advance far beyond public opinion often generate potent political backlashes. Brown, Roe v. Wade, and Furman v. Georgia all had such an effect. ... 

Third, the factors that predict political backlash – which include public opinion on the underlying issue, the relative intensity of preference on the two sides of the issue, and the ease with which a particular Court ruling can be circumvented or defied – suggest that a Supreme Court ruling in favor of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in 2015 will produce only minimal political backlash.

Polls show that fifty-five to sixty percent of Americans support same-sex marriage today—perhaps triple the percentage of twenty-five years ago. Moreover, as recently as ten years ago, opponents of same-sex marriage had much more intense feelings on the issue than did supporters. According to polls taken then, only six percent of same-sex-marriage supporters said they would be unwilling to support a political candidate with whom they disagreed on the issue, while thirty-four percent of opponents said they were willing to make same-sex marriage a voting issue. Among evangelical Christians, that number rose to fifty-five percent. That large disparity in intensity of preference between the two sides of the same-sex marriage issue no longer exists today.

Poll: Americans reject RFRA laws

From the HRC

According to MSNBC, the NBC News poll “found that 63% of Americans say business owners should be required to provide products or services to individuals who are gay or lesbian, while 37% say the business owner should be allowed to refuse if homosexuality is against their religious beliefs… Across all ages and races, Americans say a business must serve gays and lesbians no matter the owner’s religious beliefs.”

This is the second poll released this week showing strong support for LGBT Americans to be protected against discrimination. Earlier this week, a poll released by Reuters/Ipsos showed similarly showed, that voters are rejecting so-called Indiana-style “Religious Freedom Restoration Act" (RFRA) bills that allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT citizens.

So, why is one of the major parties so out of line with what Americans want, and why aren't they being called on that?

Speaking of polls, did anyone notice NOM's amicus brief to the Supreme Court? It was all about trying to argue that all the polls supporting marriage equality are somehow wrong.  But, NOM, even if you were right (and you're not) it doesn't matter.  Perhaps you missed the part about the SCOTUS not caring about public opinion, but about law....

All families deserve respect (video Sunday)

From Alabama.  Really!

Faith for marriage in Ireland: Video Sunday

The Republic of Ireland is voting on marriage equality in may. here's a statement from people of faith supporting equality.